“You newspaper men,” observed Mrs Blain, addressing me, “must have very little leisure, I think. The newspapers are always full. Isn’t it very difficult to fill the pages?”
“No,” I answered. “That’s a common error. To every newspaper in the kingdom there comes daily sufficient news of one sort or another to fill three sheets the same size. The duty of the journalist, if, of course, he is not a reporter or leader-writer, is to make a judicious selection as to what he shall publish and what he shall omit. It is this that wears out one’s brains.”
“But the reporters,” she continued—“I mean those men who go and hunt up details of horrors, crimes and such things—are they well paid?”
That struck me as a strange question, and I think I must have glanced at her rather inquiringly.
“They are paid as well as most professions are paid nowadays,” I answered. “Better, perhaps, than some.”
“And their duty is to make inquiries and scrape up all kinds of details, just like detectives, I’ve heard it said. Is that so?”
“Exactly,” I replied. “One of the cleverest men in that branch of journalism is our friend here, Mr Cleugh.”
She looked at the man I indicated, and I thought her face went slightly paler. It may, however, only have been in my imagination.
“Is he really one of those?” she inquired in a low undertone.
“Yes,” I responded. “In all Fleet Street, he’s the shrewdest man in hunting out the truth. He is the Comet man, and may claim to have originated the reporter-investigation branch of journalism.”